


everything's growing in our garden

by hollow_dweller



Series: Whumptober 2020 [5]
Category: Pilgrimage (2017)
Genre: 900 words of me feeling melancholic and taking it out on Diarmuid, Angst, Canonical Character Death, Drabble Sequence, Grief/Mourning, M/M, Not A Fix-It, Post-Canon, Whump, i repeat this is not a fix-it, implied more than anything but there, of the emotional variety
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-17
Updated: 2020-10-17
Packaged: 2021-03-08 21:35:33
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 900
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27053512
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/hollow_dweller/pseuds/hollow_dweller
Summary: Diarmuid never quite manages to leave his ghosts behind.*Whumptober Day 8: "Don't say goodbye" | Abandoned | Isolation
Relationships: Brother Diarmuid/The Mute
Series: Whumptober 2020 [5]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1935892
Comments: 4
Kudos: 12
Collections: Whumptober 2020





	everything's growing in our garden

**Author's Note:**

> written for whumptober prompt 8: "don't say goodbye" | abandoned | isolation
> 
> rating is mostly for non-explicit sex. title from "Garden Song" by Phoebe Bridgers. i was listening to _Punisher_ on loop while writing this, and honestly that's all you need to know about what's going on here

Someday Diarmuid is going to return to the shores of Kilmannán. 

When he allows himself to imagine it, he pictures this: slipping off the sturdy leather boots he wears now, setting aside his heavy woolen cloak. Walking along the beach barefoot, feet sinking deeper into the sand with every step. 

Wading out into the surf, allowing the water to soak into his breeches, dot his tunic with ocean spray, sure to leave salt stains in the linen. 

Turning his face into the bitter wind that never quite ceases to blow here, feeling it sting his cheeks, tug on his hair.

* * *

He travels the countryside for a time. The world is not as kind, nor as generous, as he might have hoped, few inclined or able to spare food and shelter for a common beggar. 

He sleeps in barns, in abandoned huts. Takes on what work he can find, to keep food in his belly and clothes on his back. Saves his coin, buys a cloak to sleep in, wrapped up tight against the chill that seems set to live in his bones.

Eventually he has enough to pay for a ferry, and lets it carry him away from familiar shores.

* * *

The Kilmannán of his imaginings is empty. 

He is not sure he intends it to be, but wherever he wanders, he finds nothing: no food in the stores, no ashes in the fire pit. 

He stands in the chapel, tips his head toward the ceiling, a familiar chant falling from his lips. Hears his voice echo in the empty space, no chorus to cushion it. 

He lies down on the floor of his cell, thinks about how its stone walls had never quite been sufficient protection from the deepest winter chills, not without another body to curl around for warmth.

* * *

Brother Ciarán used to tell him stories of Rome, when he was younger, wide-eyed and dazzled by tales of the Eternal City. 

A city so ancient, filled with buildings of unimaginable height and breadth, the skeletons of fallen pagan civilizations casting shadows over the cobblestone streets. Works of art tucked behind every corner, stone molded or scraped or chiselled into beauty, crumbling under the weight of centuries. 

Pilgrims flocking to the city from all over, hordes of the faithful kneeling before the graves of the martyrs and praying for fortune or health or prosperity. 

Diarmuid does not go to Rome.

* * *

Diarmuid spent much of his childhood exploring the cliffs that border the monastery, so it takes only the barest of thoughts to bring them up in his mind’s eye. 

There is a small opening nestled high up in the rock, too small to be called a cave, but as a child he had delighted in escaping his minders and folding himself into the small, dark, space.

He would never fit, now, but that does not really matter. He imagines himself as he had been then, tucked away inside the earth, pretending as though it had opened up and swallowed him.

* * *

Diarmuid lies with a man in Florence. 

He notices the man noticing him in a darkened tavern; tall and broad, dark hair and darker eyes. His beard chafes the delicate skin of Diarmuid’s mouth when they kiss; his broad hands press bruises into thin wrists when he pins Diarmuid down against the bed. 

The heat of his body blazes against Diarmuid’s skin, around and inside him, almost thawing the ice that grips his lungs. Diarmuid’s skin breaks out in gooseflesh when the man touches him. 

When Diarmuid finally spends, there is no name on his lips. 

He never learned it.

* * *

Inevitably, Diarmuid finds himself at the entrance to what was supposed to have been the last resting place of St. Matthias’ relic. 

He is not sure if the real thing had ever been quite so dark, but the gaping hole in the ground he stands before now seems to almost draw light into itself, the shining rays of the sun and the flickering light of torches alike lost in that infinite blackness. 

Surely that particular impression is the work of Diarmuid’s imagination, but he finds, as sweat breaks out and immediately cools on his neck, that he cannot be sure.

* * *

Diarmuid rapidly becomes what the Abbot might have once called a “far-travelled man”. 

Prague, Cologne, Naples, Seville, Paris, Venice- he loses track of all the cities where he has laid his head. It is not as difficult as he would have once thought, to walk the countryside, slipping into and out of cities, one among thousands of wandering souls. 

Disputed and peaceful territories alike are indistinguishable, when all you carry with you is a cloak draped over your shoulders and a chill in your heart. Few pay Diarmuid any mind wherever he goes, and so he can go anywhere. 

Almost.

* * *

No matter how far he travels, Diarmuid always finds himself back on the shores of Kilmannán. 

His mind never has trouble conjuring the details: the wind on his face; the scent of brine filling his nose; the grit of sand between his toes. 

He sits, head resting on knees tucked against his chest, gazing out over the waves. Over the crashing of the surf, he hears the soft sounds of footsteps behind him. 

A body settles in the sand at his side: tall, broad, silent. Unmistakeable. 

He leans into a familiar warmth, and does not turn his head to look. 

**Author's Note:**

> sorry


End file.
